So I was taking more pictures for a friend yesterday at a park... We were outside where it was mostly sunny in some places and some places were half shade, and other places were full shade... Well, I wanted to attempt using my off camera flash... So I practiced for a little while with my kids...

I tried putting it in each different auto mode (there's yellow, red, blue, and purple... Yellow being the lowest strength as far as the brightness of the flash, and purple being the strongest), and there is also this little circle on the front of it and right above it, it says, "vari power"... So if I remember correctly (I need to find the little pamphlet thing that came with it.. I am pretty sure it's in my bag) that little circle is kind of like a light meter where it determines how much ambient light there is and adjusts the flash to where it thinks it needs to be...

Well, I didn't notice a difference at all in any of the pictures... Whether it was sunny, shade, or half and half... So I tried covering the little circle where it says "vari power" so that it would think it was totally dark... I still didn't notice any difference...

So I double checked to make sure the flash was on, listened for the high pitched sound that flashes make when they are warming up, did a test fire of the flash to make sure it was actually going off... everything checked out, everything was doing what it was supposed to. But I was noticing NO DIFFERENCE whatsoever in the pictures...

So then I tried the pop up flash... And guess what... I noticed the difference...

WTF is wrong with my flash? lol It was on and doing what it was supposed to do as long as I wasn't trying to use it to take a picture :/

so now that I went through and typed all of that and I am inside, I can see that the indicator lights on the back aren't lighting up like they should. The red and green lights are supposed to light up one at a time, then blink when the flash is ready...

I've only had it for a month and only used it twice including yesterday... Hmmm... :/

One piece sits in the hot shoe, the other piece attaches to the bottom of the camera. You can do it that way, or you can just use the piece that sits in the hot shoe as a remote and fire the flash when you want to instead of when the shutter releases.